Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles, including Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB Portable Hard Disk Drive Review, HTC One Android Smartphone Review, Resident Evil 6 - Too Much Action for Horror?, Sony VAIO T14 Ultrabook Review @ The SSD Review, and Intel Core "Haswell" Easier to Overclock



Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB Portable Hard Disk Drive Review @ TechARP

As the world's second-largest hard disk drive manufacturer, Seagate has a wide variety of external storage solutions, from network-attached storage (NAS) to the ubiquitous USB hard disk drives.

Read more: Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB Portable Hard Disk Drive Review @ TechARP

HTC One Android Smartphone Review @ HardwareHeaven.com

So what if HTC could design a handset which looked to compete not with Samsung but Apple in terms of build quality... and what if they refined their OS experience to add some differentiation from Samsung while staying a little closer to Android's stock experience than Sense had in the past. Well with the HTC One we find out and that is the focus of today's review.

Read more: HTC One Android Smartphone Review @ HardwareHeaven.com

SPEEDLINK ATHERA Multi-Profile Keyboard Review @ Madshrimps

The Athera is a new Bluetooth keyboard from SPEEDLINK which sports high-quality scissor-key technology and comes with a new feature meaning that we can connect up to five Bluetooth devices and switch between them by using the function keys. As an extra, the keyboard can be also used as a regular desktop peripheral by connecting it on USB.

Read more: SPEEDLINK ATHERA Multi-Profile Keyboard Review @ Madshrimps

Rosewill RSL-113 Solar Infrared LED Lights @ Benchmark Reviews

Benchmark Reviews tests a lot of computer-related hardware, so this item might seem out of place. Performance enthusiasts invest in their gear, so it makes sense to ensure it's safe and protected. The Rosewill RSL-113 Dual-Head PIR Solar Light is a (passive) pyroelectric infra-red activated lighting system that draws power from three AA solar-charged batteries located inside the unit. In this article, Benchmark Reviews investigates the Rosewill RSL-113 Solar-Charged Infrared Dual-LED Lights.

Read more: Rosewill RSL-113 Solar Infrared LED Lights @ Benchmark Reviews

Resident Evil 6 - Too Much Action for Horror? @ Techgage

Resident Evil 6 starts off by plopping you into a training level where you play as Leon, one of the 8 playable characters. Once you have completed your training you are taken to the menu of the game where you can then choose the campaign you wish to play; these can either be played solo or through co-op. The individual campaigns are interconnected, and each one will take you about 5 to 6 hours on average to complete.

Each story featured in the game is intertwined with the others in one way or another, which gives the collaboration between the multiple characters and the world a greater sense of depth and purpose. The only issue that I had with this was that when the characters were collaborating together on certain events that required you to take down a boss, the final blow shifted to the characters you were playing, and that scenario made itself more important than the previous one. That being said, all of the characters still felt important and integral to one another and to the overall story, which obviously is not an easy thing to do.

Read more: Resident Evil 6 - Too Much Action for Horror? @ Techgage

Icy Dock ICYRaid MB662U3-2S Dual-HDD Enclosure Review @ Hi Tech Legion

This doesn’t necessarily mean that things have to be “dumbed down” to reach broader appeal. True, it has to be simple enough that the inconvenience of the learning curve it presents does not thoroughly outweigh the advantages it presents, but it also has to be functional first and foremost. Granted, some aspects of computing are inescapably complicated, but there are others which needlessly are such as setting up RAID drives. Icy Dock, as one of the foremost names in storage solutions has been aiming to simplify the process of external RAID solutions with their ICYRaid line of external enclosures.

The Icy Dock ICYRaid MB662U3-2S, unlike other external USB 3.0 enclosures has the hardware capability to run drives in RAID, independent of the PC. The ICYRaid MB662U3-2S replaces the discontinued MB662UEAB-2S which used the older USB 2.0 and FireWire connection with a much faster and more widely used USB 3.0 port. Users can install a pair of two 3.5” HDDs up to 4TB in capacity each for a total of up to 8GB of storage inside the Icy Dock MB662U3-2S. To cool both drives when they are continuously used, the ICYRaid MB662U3-2S is equipped with a 40mm Sunon MAGLev fan that operates silently and can be adjust through a built-in fan controller. Users can configure drives installed inside the MB662U3-2S in RAID 0, RAID 1, BIG, or JBOD just by simply moving the RAID toggle switch and pressing the reset button while the enclosure is on. No further steps are required, other than formatting the drives or adjust the partition when necessary of course. The Icy Dock ICYRAid MB662U3-2S is compatible with either Mac or PC and comes with a three-year limited warranty.

Read more: Icy Dock ICYRaid MB662U3-2S Dual-HDD Enclosure Review @ Hi Tech Legion

REVIEW: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7790 @ PureOverclock

AMD’s current 7000 generation cards have matured rather nicely for the most part, and now we’re looking at the latest addition to the lineup, with the Radeon HD 7790. It’s a more budget-oriented card, positioned against Nvidia’s GTX 650 Ti which hasn’t had much competition of late. It seems AMD has designed this card purposely to compete both in performance and price in the $150 bracket, targeted at mainstream consumers who want some moderate gaming without breaking the bank.

Read more: REVIEW: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7790 @ PureOverclock

PowerColor Radeon HD 7850 PCS+ Review @ OCC

Overclocking PowerColor's HD 7850 PCS+ is much like overclocking any of the 7XXX series of Southern Islands GCN core-based video cards as it relates strictly to overclocking. Each core and memory combination is going to to have its limits. First off using PowerColor's Powerup Tuner utility limited the clock speed on the core to a maximum of 1050MHz on the core and 1425MHz on the GDDR5 memory. Having seen speeds in excess of 1200MHz on just about every GCN card I have tested, I felt this was a bit low and moved to a different utility that allowed a higher core clock on the core. Sapphire's TriXX utility was able to deliver this added clock speed and allowed the clock speed on the core to scale well up and over the 1200MHz mark. A 235MHz boost in GPU speed is worth the added work to get there in this case. The Elpida-based memory was not as flexible when it came to overclocking with a maximum of 1400MHz stable. The memory clock speeds were not able to overclock high enough to really add a significant amount of memory bandwidth to help the benchmarking scores. Even so they still managed to improve by 175MHz.

Read more: PowerColor Radeon HD 7850 PCS+ Review @ OCC

Sony VAIO T14 Ultrabook Review @ The SSD Review

Sony’s new VIAO touchscreen T14 arrived last week, complete with hybrid hard drive and Windows 8. Frequent readers of TSSDR understand my opinion of both, an opinion that was initially hard to contain with their teaming up in what appears to be an attractive ultra design.

Swapping out the hard drive for an SSD was a given. Stepping outside the box, we believed the analysis and replacement of ExpressCache with NVELO Dataplex might be worth the effort and worthy of report. Could it be done?

To date, we haven’t seen Samsung’s NVELO Dataplex in any ultra book or laptop design, yet it is unquestionably the highest performing caching software that we know of. Is there another that could actually see a hybrid ultra book design reach exceed data speeds above 500MB/s by twinning the performance of a caching SSD onto that of a hard drive?

Read more: Sony VAIO T14 Ultrabook Review @ The SSD Review

Intel Core "Haswell" Easier to Overclock @ TechPowerUp

At the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2013 event held in Beijing last week, the company ran two separate seminars related to "Haswell," one related to the micro-architecture itself, and the other overclocking it. The company detailed improvements to the ways in which you can overclock these chips, without necessarily having to shell out dough for the base clock multiplier unlocked "-K" parts.

To begin with, tweaking Core "Haswell" processors will be similar to tweaking Core "Sandy Bridge-E" high-end desktop (HEDT) platform. Naturally then, overclocking "non-K" parts will be similar to overclocking the Core i7-3820. The chips ship with a base clock speed of 100 MHz. As with "Ivy Bridge," not just CPU cores, but also certain uncore components rely on this frequency. Also, as with "Ivy Bridge," overclockers will be given 5 to 7 percent headroom for tweaking this frequency, but it doesn't end there.

Read more: Intel Core "Haswell" Easier to Overclock @ TechPowerUp

CASIO Edifice EF-558D-1AVEF Review @ NikKTech

Although the market is filled with a large number of watch manufacturers and has been for many decades only one of them has really been with me since my early days in junior high (i think the same applies for many people judging solely from the people i know) and that's none other than the Japanese CASIO and their famous G-Shock watches. I still remember the bulky rugged design of the G-Shock watches and their quite unique features such as temperature reading, world time and that green backlight that made them stand out in the dark. Back then however (roughly 20 years ago) CASIO didn't really have the variety and features/technology they have now in their G-Shock line and they certainly didn't have that many quality bracelet watches like they do now with their somewhat new, impressive and quite successful Edifice line. However since to date i haven't had the opportunity to use one of their new Edifice watches (btw my 1994 G-Shock still works) we decided to check one of their latest best sellers the EF-558D-1AVEF.

Casio was founded in 1957 with the development of a revolutionary calculator. Casio’s small, fast calculator greatly increased office efficiency, and before long people had their own personal calculators. Thanks to this technology, it is easy now for anyone to perform calculations, leaving people free to concentrate on creative thinking. Over the years, Casio has developed many other groundbreaking products. Our watches became critical tools for planning and living daily life. Our electronic dictionaries provide a wealth of knowledge in a tiny package. Our electronic musical instruments deliver the joy of playing music for people of all skill levels, and our digital cameras make it easy to turn the excitement of the moment into a precious memory. All of these developments supported people's intellectual creativity, and that is the essence of how we see Casio's role in the world.

Read more: CASIO Edifice EF-558D-1AVEF Review @ NikKTech